I dropped my Action account some time ago, in favour of another which Scotia ended up buying and then degrading the service and increasing the price. Fairly typical in Canada, eh?
For my own purposes I've done up a comparison between Scotia (where my RRSP accounts are housed) and the three price leaders in "direct access" brokers in Canada. Perhaps this will be useful to someone (check the figures if making any broker decisions, I got a little bug-eyed creating the table):
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Shares under 2 / 3$ | Shares over 3$
Share Qty 1000 5000 1000 5000 | 1000 5000 1000 5000 1000 5000 1000 5000
Share price 1$ 1.99 2.99 2.99 | 5$ 5$ 10$ 10$ 20$ 20$ 50$ 50$
-------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------
Disnat 19.95 124.38 19.95 75.00 | 19.95 75.00 19.95 75.00 19.95 75.00 19.95 75.00
Questrade 18.15 19.94 18.55 20.94 | 18.95 55.00 19.95 60.00 21.95 70.00 28.95 100.00
TradeFreedom 18.15 19.94 18.55 20.94 | 18.95 90.00 19.95 95.00 21.95 105.00 27.95 135.00
Scotia 28.95 100.00 28.95 125.00 | 28.95 125.00 28.95 125.00 28.95 125.00 28.95 125.00
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IB * doesn't offer RRSP / RESP etc accounts. Priceless.
Assumptions:
- 10 trades per month (Disnat's minimum) and less than 50
- Canadian stocks only
- limit orders
- RRSP accounts
Disnat (Webbroker)
disnatdirect.com
- all TSX fees are bundled into per share fees
- 1.5 cents per share
- shares < 2$ are 1.25% of total order
- 19.95 minimum
Questrade (Webtrade)
questrade.com
- TSX fee of .0002 times total trade order on top of per share fee max 50$
- 1 cent per hsare
- min 17.95 plus TSX fee
- < 3$ per share - flat rate 17.95 plus TSX fee
TradeFreedom (MB Trading Windows platform)
tradefreedom.com
(can use other data/does integrate with eSignal and DTN IQ and NeoTicker.)
- TSX fee of .0002 times total trade order on top of per share fee max 50$
- < 3$ per share - flat rate 17.95 plus TSX fee
- > 3$ per share, up to 1000 shares: 17.95 per trade
- More than 1000 shares: 1.7 cent per share unless you do > 49 trades a month (1.5 cents)
Scotia
scotiabank.com
- 28.95 minimum fee
- 2 cents per share > 1 < 2$
- 2.5 cents per share > 2
Other comments:
Questrade - 10.95 US flat rate up to 5,000 shares (.005 per share surcharge over 5000 max 50$ is a pretty good rate compared to other brokers in Canada other than IB).
DisnatDirect is part of Desjardins Securities, the securities brokerage arm of the Mouvement Desjardins which has over 38,000 employees, so those looking for a firm with resources, Disnat perhaps is worthy of consideration.
Disnat and Questrade both use Penson Financial as their back end and the web platform is identical for both near as I can tell. This is the same platform that Credential (credit union brokerage) uses.
Disnat, Questrade, and TradeFreedom also offer windows-based trading platforms. TradeFreedom in fact only offers a windows-based platform (a custom version of MB Trading's platform) which can plug into some popular charting applications such as eSignal or Neoticker tickquest.com - so that is a potential area of savings for those who do not trade enough to fund the "platform fees" of non-web platforms these brokers offer.
With the exception of under 2$ stocks, I was quite surprised to see Disnat's "DDWeb" offering stand up so well to comparison.
(Of course all the US based traders will be shocked at how much Canadians pay, period.)
Disclaimer: I have no direct knowledge of any the mentioned brokers except for Action Direct, Interactive Brokers, and Scotia Direct where I am but yet another client. |
